Three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one… It’s all a game until it’s not. Coming this month from Severin is the baffling, gorgeous and deeply fascinating Peter Greenaway film Drowning by Numbers in a glorious new UHD transfer. Where does this film rank in the pantheon of weirdo auteurist Greenaway’s ouevre?

Three generations of women, all named Crissie, drown their husbands. Three generations of women attend three funerals. Three generations of women flirt with with the coroner. Three generations of women play games. Three generations of women scatter the remains and swim away. Adjacent to this story is the son Smut, a teenage boy obsessed with numbers and games that acts as a kind of witness at a distance and gamesmaster to the proceedings. He is also enamored with a neighborhood girl who spends much of her time dressed for a party she will never attend, jumping rope and counting stars (but only up to 100 because after that the other hundreds are all the same). Smut numbers death. We see a series of numbers, sometimes overt, sometimes hidden within the scenery, counting up to 100 throughout the film. Three women. Three murders. Three funerals. Three spurned advances. What does it add up to?

Something wonderful, that’s what. For whatever reason, I have never really gravitated to Greenaway’s work. His most well-known film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is a grotesquely beautiful film with superb acting but a plot that left me a little cold. I felt similarly about many of his other ornately weird films like The Draughtman’s Contract, Prospero’s Books and The Baby of Macon. For whatever reason, the film of his I liked the most and which most resembles the game-like structure of Drowning By Numbers is The Falls with its striated mini-vignettes all surrounding the same Event and all featuring people with the last name of Fall. Drowning by Numbers might be Greenaway’s most accessible film despite its relentless weirdness. The plot is very straight forward, and it goes through the numbers (quite literally) with a dark and cheeky sense of humor about it. Greenaway never lets us forget we are watching a film and uses this expectation to play with the audience, engaging with us in unusual ways like with the hidden numbers and the constant allusions and references to games. All this while embedding his characters in strikingly gorgeous deep focus, meticulously detailed set design composed with a painterly ambition and influenced by symmetrical numerology. Greenaway himself states in particular the influence of mid-19th century Victorian painters, and in the extras we even see similarity in screen composition to some well-known artworks. Watching it, I can’t help but think of Wes Anderson’s shadowbox diorama sets and static camerawork. While Anderson has never, as far as I can find, cited Greenaway as an influence, I can’t possibly imagine Anderson never having seen Greenaway’s films. Beyond the set design and framing, Smut’s description of the games and particularly the ludicrously complicated Hangman’s Cricket feels very reminiscent of Anderson’s breakdown of Whack-Bat in Fantastic Mr. Fox. The one key difference between the two though is where Anderson veers more into quirky and sentimental, Greenaway wallows in sex and death, almost a fixation in fact across all his films. As a result, this fascination on Greenaway’s part gives Drowning by Numbers a bite to it, and you can tangibly feel Greenaway relishing the sheer artifice of the whole thing. It’s truly a wonder to behold.

As I have already alluded, the new 4K scan Severin has given us in glorious UHD showcases the absolute stunning cinematography that Greenaway is known for. As part of this, the UHD in particular actually gives further detail to Greenaway’s extreme depth of field at times, making this a truly worthy upgrade with a film made to be presented in as high definition as possible. For those who don’t have the most high-end systems, the regular 1080p transfer on the blu-ray is also quite stunning and certainly will impress those who want to view Greenaway’s film in HD without the best equipment on the market. The 2.0 stereo audio mix, while certainly not as showy as the video transfer, is still a solid, clean track with nice separation and a crispness that presents the film’s lovely score well.

In typical Severin fashion, we are provided with several extras to give additional context on the film (and trust me, you will want additional context on this complex and baffling feature). The main attraction on the extras front is most likely the feature-length audio commentary from Greenaway himself, and it is exhaustive to say the least. Greenaway breaks down the film shot by shot, citing all his various influences and meanings, from paintings referenced to origins of games played in the film to personal anecdotes while shooting and how specific complex shots were achieved. Greenaway’s delivery may not be to all tastes as it comes across less as a fireside chat and more of a scholarly lecture, but it is a veritable wealth of useful information about the film. In addition to the commentary we have two interviews, one a fifteen-minute interview with Greenaway that goes over some of the same things he discussed on the commentary in more detail but acts as a good featurette for those who may not have time to listen to the full commentary. Along a similar line is the 30-minute archival featurette “Fear of Drowning” that finds Greenaway breaking down different scenes in the film as well. Much of this featurette also has overlap with the commentary but offers a good alternative for those without the time. The other interview is a ten-minute segment with actor Bernard Hill who played the coroner Madgett in Drowning by Numbers. He comes across very personable with some nice anecdotes about his remembrances of the film. The final extra, beyond a trailer, is a slideshow of images from Greenaway’s production diary showing his conceptual drawings of various games from the film and is actually a pretty neat short that gives more insight into Greenaway’s labyrinthine mind.

If you haven’t guessed already, I really enjoyed this film with its black comedy plot, puzzle box numerology structure and stunning set design and cinematography. This is one I wholeheartedly recommend seeing in as high definition as possible, and Severin’s new 4K disc delivers the goods.